Mindshare Marketing

Today’s article also featured on SmarterMarkets

A little while ago, I participated in a research project establishing baselines for environmental legitimacy among large energy, pharmaceutical, and consumer packaged goods companies.  The research team focused on a list of 150 organizations and tracked how often they disclosed the environmental consequences of their operations.

How much water did they use?  How much waste was deposited in landfills?  How much money did they invest in habitat reconstruction?  There was a long list of issues we looked at; while some companies were very transparent, others had little to no interest in disclosure.  When we looked deeper, we also found out that the companies who were closest to “full disclosure” actually performed better financially than those who didn’t report anything.

We weren’t surprised by this result, but many of the corporate managers were.

Yesterday I came across a different kind of disclosure, and I’m worried by what it means for the rest of us.  By day I’m a mild-mannered marketer, but at night I transform into a mighty … publisher.  Yes, my hobby isn’t as exciting as Superman’s or Batman’s, but still, I enjoy it.  I own a publishing company that I work on part time, and yesterday I negotiated a deal with a new printer.

They were helpful throughout the entire process of filling out the application, the licensing agreements, and even the direct debit paperwork.  They also offered me credit terms for my projects.  I loved the ease of their system and the comparably low per-unit price they have when compared to the rest of the industry.

Then they asked for an additional set-up fee.  It’s required up-front for each project and doesn’t vary on the size of the project or the timeliness of the printing job.  While it’s not a large fee, it was never mentioned in any of their promotional materials, any of their pre-contract fee breakdown sheets, or referenced by any of their sales representatives.

Truly, finding out about the charge after I signed the contract and got ready to print my first project with them was disappointing.  If it weren’t for the fact that I had already decided to pursue a long-term relationship with this company, the lack of full disclosure might have encouraged me to look elsewhere.

Does your company practice full disclosure?  Every time, with every contract?  What might it mean for your long-term success if you don’t?

No, I’m not talking about the wondermeat (meat?) pictured to the left, but the wonderful phenomenon of email inboxes filled with delightfully useless, albeit annoying, messages from complete strangers.  Spam.

I made the mistake for quite some time of listing my personal email address on my websites.  I was much younger, and didn’t understand how easily it could be pulled off the web and thrown into a spam-spewing message machine.  For instance, my “contact” email address for this site (never actually listed anywhere publically) has accrued 763 spam messages over the last month.  How many legitimate emails has it received in the same time period?

Two.

The ironic thing is what the spam email is about.  Usually, we relate the idea of spam email to “male enhancement” products or online universities.  The majority of this spam, on the other hand, is directed towards legitimate, branded products.  If I were going to subscribe to DirecTV, though, it would be directly through the company, not through some obscure affiliate program.

How much do these affiliate programs hurt parent brands, though?  I mean I know that Apple isn’t really emailing me directly to ask me to purchase a new laptop, but the email itself is very well presented and lookes legitimate.  The fact that I never asked Apple to contact me or gave them my information makes the email annoying … particularly when it enters my inbox with 20-30 of its friends.

Does your business participate in affiliate marketing?  How much control do you weild over your affiliates?  Could they possibly be spamming people with your brand?  What would this mean for consumer appreciation of your actual marketing efforts?

As promised, my review of the movie.  Since I don’t like removing spoilers, I’ve hidden everything with a “more” tag.  If you want to avoid spoilers, then just ignore my post.  If, on the other hand, you don’t mind, then please click the read more link:

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